Join us: Dynamic norms encourage women to pursue STEM
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Join us: Dynamic norms encourage women to pursue STEM Lei Cheng 1 & Mingyang Hao 1 & Lijuan Xiao 1 & Fang Wang 1 Accepted: 29 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is a key challenge in many countries. Extant studies have explored why women opt out of STEM fields and how to encourage women to enter these fields. The current research examined the use of dynamic information about the collective change in a behavior over time to increase women’s willingness and intention to embark on STEM fields. Across two experimental studies and a mini meta-analysis, we found that when exposed to a message about an increasing number of women choosing to pursue STEM careers over time, female students in high school (Study 1) and college (Study 2) were more likely to declare an intention to enter STEM fields and have more interest in STEM careers. Furthermore, we tested the mediating effects of self-efficacy and perceived identity compatibility (Study 2). The results showed that dynamic norms can increase women’s self-efficacy for pursuing a career in STEM fields and perceived identity compatibility, thereby leading to greater interest in STEM fields and more willingness to choose a STEM career. Keywords STEM . Dynamic norms . Gender . Self-efficacy . Perceived identity compatibility
Introduction The underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields is still a substantial problem in most countries across the world. For example, in the United States, although the percentage of female college graduates is higher than that of male graduates, female graduates account for 19% of all graduates earning computer science degrees (National Science Foundation, 2015). Similarly, in the labor market, only 15% of engineers and 24% of computer scientists are women (National Science Foundation, 2015). In Australia, female university students were poorly represented in engineering and related technologies (20%) and in information technology (10%) (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2012). Among East Asian countries, women earned 28% of the science and engineering bachelor’s degrees in Japan and 30% in South Korea (National Science Foundation, 2016). Many societies suffer from the loss of economic and scientific advancement as a result of this failure to recruit and make full
* Fang Wang [email protected] 1
Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
use of potential STEM professionals (U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, 2012). Furthermore, since STEMrelated careers are highly valued occupations in many societies (U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, 2012), the inadequate number of women is a crucial factor that results in a gender pay gap, which exacerbates gender inequality. It s
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